


a little rebellion (now and then)

by skitzofreak



Series: Calamity's Child [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Child Soldiers, F/M, Homelessness, Jyn was a lonely child, Movie scene, Rebellion, Saw was not crazy, Thoughts of Suicide, Tumblr Prompt, Violence, and not much for compromising, because rebels be rebelling, but he was always pretty intense, but sometimes you have to go big, little Jyn, making a hard choice, non-canon compliant, rebellion is often in many small ways, the farm droid from Lah'mu, thoughts of drug use, why sometimes "selfish" is just another word for "survivor"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 02:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12973299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: Papa says, “Treat dangerous things with respect, Stardust.”Mama says, “Clean up your own messes, Jyn.”(They neither of them ever know exactly how deeply both of these lessons dig into Jyn’s brain and stay with her throughout her life.)For the Rogue One Anniversary Prompt Challenge. Day 1: Favorite Character/Rebellion





	1. hopscotch with the stars

**Author's Note:**

> “I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing."  
> \- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, 1787

Jyn is a good girl. Really, she is. She does everything she’s told, and she eats her vegetables and drinks her mineral milk and (usually) washes behind her ears. Most of the time, she’s a very good girl. Sometimes, alright, _sometimes_ she’s maybe not as good as she ought to be. But most days, she at least tries really hard to be good, and that counts.

Today, of course, is not one of those days.

Not that she’s being _bad_ , really. But it’s her sixth birthday, and on birthdays, she’s allowed to be a little bit naughty, right? And it’s not even that she’s being _really_ naughty, after all. She just wants to play with Essie, because it’s her birthday and Essie is her best friend. Jyn doesn’t have many friends (sorry, Stormy, and Wei-pei, and Joodi, and Warm Fuzz, she loves them, she really does, but they don’t ever say anything that Jyn didn’t think up first and that makes friendship a bit hard) so not having SE-2 around to wish her a happy birthday is very bad and wrong and not fair _at all_.

Papa says, “I had to shut him down for a diagnostic, Stardust.”

Mama says, “Don’t play with the droids without someone with you, Jyn.”

(Mama forgets, sometimes, that there aren’t other people around except her and Papa. She says things like that: “dearest, run along and find someone to play with,” or “go outside and see what everyone else is doing while I finish this” when Jyn gets too underfoot and Papa says it’s just that she _forgets_.)

How hard can a diagnostic be? Don’t droids run those on their own all the time? And anyway, Jyn thinks as she sneaks quietly out to the droid shed with her hood pulled up high and her grubby too-big boots tiptoeing as quietly as she can through the grass and mud, it isn’t like she’s _playing_. She’s just going to flip a few switches and say hello and make sure Essie is happy and not rusting again like last month and then Essie will say happy birthday. That’s not _bad_.

Papa says, “Be patient, Stardust, I’ll bring him online as soon as I can.”

Mama says, “If you keep making that face, a rancor will mistake you for a mate and fall in love with you, and then it will carry you away.”

(Jyn knows about rancors because of the educational holostreams that Mama lets her watch sometimes when the weather is very bad and they can’t go outside, and Papa is too busy muttering to his datapads and flimsies and can’t talk to her about energy loops or gravitational time dilation. Rancors are ugly and slimy but they stomp around and make big messes and no one ever puts them to bed early when they refuse to clean up after, so Jyn kind of likes them. And the ‘stream said they had big families with lots of rancor all in one pack, so they are never alone in the wild. It wouldn’t be so bad, to be a rancor.)

SE-2 the farm droid is propped up on his charging station, still as a statue and optic light dark. Weird, he’s not even plugged in. Maybe Papa forgot again? Well, in that case, Jyn’s being very good and helpful by fixing that, isn’t she? The little blue light on Essie’s head blinks on as she carefully slides the heavy charger in place. But the droid doesn’t move, and Jyn frowns for a few minutes before she makes her way to the messy workbench along one wall, where Papa keeps all his fiddly tools and bits of wires and Mama has a few of her rocks and dirt samples. Jyn’s not supposed to touch the bench, because both Mama and Papa have their own organization system, or so Mama says with that funny smile on her face that means she’s teasing and Papa sighs a little sheepishly. But Jyn pays attention so she knows where all the droid tools are kept, even if it’s a little silly that they aren’t together in one nice spot. She can see the sparker tool and the ratchet spike from here, and the retort hammer and the…the…bigerator? Bangerator? Whatever, the red glowy one that makes Essie spark a little and then work faster, that one is _right there_ on the edge of the bench.

Papa says, “I promise I will repair SE-2 as soon as I figure out the correct method.”

Mama says, “You’re too small to properly handle those tools.”

Stormy says, “Essie will be sad he missed your birthday.”

So Jyn drags a stool over to the bench and climbs up and gets the ratchet spike and the sparker and the…glowy one, and then clambers back down a little awkwardly with her small hands full of big metal tools and clunky machine bits. It takes her a few minutes to figure out how to get Essie’s chassis port open, and even longer to figure out which circuit loop feeds into which internal processor. It’s no good activating Essie’s protocols if he’s not even turned on, right?

But eventually, she finds the right wire and gets the ratchet spike into the…whatever that little slot is called, but the ratchet spike fits there perfectly, so it must be right. And then the sparker goes… _here_ , so if she just pokes _this_ wire…and she’s definitely seen Papa use the glowy one _there_ …

A loud crack, and her vision abruptly goes white as the inside of Essie’s chassis sparks and ignites like a lightning flash.  Jyn flails backwards, hands flying up to cover her face, and she feels the stool under her knees tipping backwards and then the swift, sick sensation of falling –

Something hard strikes her back, and Jyn cries out as her shirt constricts around her neck and armpits and jerks her to a halt in midair. She kicks a little wildly for a moment, clutching at her collar, and then her vision clears and the panic settles and she realizes that she’s dangling, more or less, a few inches off the ground. Essie is as still as a statue again, except now he’s standing, the back of Jyn’s shirt clenched in one metal hand, and little bolts of light are jumping around his chassis like he’s got a storm inside his chest.

“Essie?” Jyn calls, trying to wriggle out of his grip and drop to the ground. It’s no good, though, because he’s got a hard grip on her shirt and it’s just too tight to slip through. So she kicks until she spins around to face him and calls again. “Essie? Are you online?”

No response. Jyn kicks again, more out of frustration because this is not good at all and she can’t even try to fix it when she’s stuck like this. “Essie,” she commands in her toughest, most Mama-like voice. “Put me down right now!”

“Internal log accessed,” Essie replies abruptly in his high, thin voice. “External shutdown initiated by Erso, Galen. Chronometer accessed. Shutdown occurred two point three days prior to current time.”

“Papa shut you down because you had a diagnostic,” Jyn supplies helpfully, because Essie’s making that whirring noise that means he’s working through some problem bigger than his data processor was built to handle. Something bigger than mineral percentages or water purifiers, basically. The whirr sounds a little distressed this time, possibly because he’s still sparking unpleasantly, but also because Jyn guesses it isn’t nice to wake up and realize you’ve lost a couple days.

“Error,” Essie responds. “No diagnostics have been run.”

“Essie, put me down,” Jyn orders again, because her armpits are really starting to ache and her fingers are tingling a little.

“No diagnostics have been run. Purpose of external shutdown unclear.” The droid’s mono-optical focuses suddenly, squarely on Jyn’s face. “Erso, Jyn,” he announces.

“Yes, me,” she agrees, kicking again and only succeeding in sending herself into a slow, awkward spin. “You’re making my hands numb,” she tries to say over her shoulder and only ends up making herself spin back the other way.

“Erso, Jyn. Classification: child, human.” Essie’s voicebox goes a little…wonky, for a moment, and then smooths back out into his usual high, clear tone. “Danger detected. High voltage in vicinity.”

Jyn giggles a little, because a little electric bolt arcs up from Essie’s chest to his neck and leaves a little sizzle noise right as he says the words “high voltage.” But the laugh dies quickly, because this is really starting to hurt her armpits and she’s spinning again, slow and wobbly and annoying. “Essie, please put me down,” she asks in her sweetest, most Papa-like voice.

“Danger detected. Significant fall likely.”

This time Jyn rolls her eyes because _come on_. “Put me down,” she grumbles, “and it won’t be.”

“No diagnostics have been run,” Essie says, his voicebox doing that wonky thing again. Jyn frowns, because the weirdness in his voice isn’t static or anything that she recognizes as a mechanical failure. He sounds kind of like Papa did that time Jyn fell down the hillside behind the house and skinned up her knees and hands and bonked her head a little and felt sick.

“It’s alright,” she tries to sound like Mama sounded, that time when she fell. “It’s alright. Everything is alright.” She strains to remember what else Mama had said then, but the numbness is working up her wrists and arms now and she really wants to get down. Finally, she blurts out, “Don’t be afraid, love.”

Essie’s optic light flashes blue to green to red to blue again, and then – _finally_ – he lowers her to the ground. Jyn rubs her arms and tugs at her collar to pull it away from her neck, and grins at him even though he’s still sparking and jerking a little bit. “Erso, Jyn,” Essie says. “You have reactivated this unit.”

She nods, rolling her shoulders to ease the ache in her arms. “I wanted to wake you up,” she explains.

“Reason for shutdown unknown. Purpose of restart?”

Jyn hesitates, because the droid is jerking slightly each time he sparks, and she wonders if it hurts him and feels a little guilty that it might. “It’s my birthday,” she admits, hunching her shoulders up a little. “And I wanted to wake you up.”

Essie whirrs a little, processing, processing, but then a big spark interrupts the sound. “I’m sorry,” Jyn whispers, and then frowns at the sparking chassis. Jyn frowns, and eyes Essie’s open chassis plate. “I think I can fix that.” She can, too – the red glowy tool is sort of stuck against a few of Essie’s circuits, wedged at a weird angle when she fell back. If she can just pull that loose, it will probably stop all that light and noise and burning smell.

“Erso, Jyn.” Another large spark, and then Essie takes a slow, jolting step back towards the wall. “Danger detected. High voltage in vicinity. Please remain at a safe distance.”

“I can fix it, Essie,” Jyn insists, pulling her sleeves back and glaring at the bad tool in the wrong spot that’s causing all these problems for her friend.

 “Negative,” Essie says firmly, and his legs twitch as if he’s trying to step back again but he can’t because of the wall. “Danger detected. Erso, Jyn, This unit requests that you remain at a safe –“

A large series of sparks rattles his thin metal body, and then his voice box shuts off to a high metal shriek.

Papa says, “Treat dangerous things with respect, Stardust.”

Mama says, “Clean up your own messes, Jyn.”

(They neither of them ever know exactly how deeply both of these lessons dig into Jyn’s brain and stay with her throughout her life. Nor does Jyn, not really, not for a long, long time.)

Jyn takes just enough time to grab the grease towel Papa hangs on the side of the workbench, and then she lunges for Essie’s chest, throwing the towel over the glowy red tool and wrapping her fingers around the handle to give it a sharp yank.

Her arm seizes up and jerks, and it doesn’t hurt but it’s scary because her hand won’t respond to her commands, her arm isn’t her arm anymore, and in a little panic of her own she throws herself backwards. The force yanks her arm and her hand and the glowy red tool out of Essie’s chassis cavity, and Jyn lands flat on her back with her teeth tingling and her arm aching even worse than when she was suspended over the floor.

But the sparks have stopped.

Jyn swallows and struggles gracelessly back to her feet. “Essie?” She asks cautiously. The droid is slumped against his charging station again, still as a statue. “Are you online?” Jyn drops the glowy red tool and reaches a cautious hand out.

The blue light flickers on Essie’s head. “Erso, Jyn,” he says in a clear, high voice. “This unit requests that you experience a pleasant birthday celebration.”

 

Papa says, “You must do things in the correct order.”

Mama says, “Always think before you act.”

Essie says, “Remain at a safe distance.”

Jyn laughs and decides that being good doesn’t mean she has to do _everything_ she’s told.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [SE-2](http://www.starwars.com/databank/se-2-essie) was the farm droid from the Erso homestead that apparently "alerted the Erso family when he spotted Director Orson Krennic's Imperial shuttle approaching the homestead." 
> 
> Title from internet poet atticus: "She was just another girl, playing hopscotch with the stars."
> 
> I have some ideas for a few more shorts like this. If I have the time, I'll write them out today and post them later.


	2. this poem is a knife

Jyn is a good soldier. Everybody says so. Even cranky Weeteef with his vicious smile and his watery, angry eyes sometimes gives Jyn a short nod and, once, a spare sticky grenade from his own stash. Some of the other younglings in the cadre, Maia and Codo and Rai’sodan, always ask Jyn to practice their coding or their hand to hand combat training; she’s only twelve but she’s one of the best in the cadre. Even the older, harder soldiers like Magva Yarro and the Tognathi eggmates speak to Jyn with something like respect. She carries out orders with efficiency, she carries her weight.

That’s the reason Saw tells her that they listen. That’s the story that all the Partisans tell, on the rare occasion some outside ally asks about the tiny Human girl who stands ever-silent at Saw Gerrera’s elbow, even in the meetings where his fully-grown warriors are not allowed.

It’s only half true.

Of course she _is_ a good soldier, she _is_ efficient, she _is_ (already) a clever slicer and a good shot and frighteningly handy with a sticky grenade.

That isn’t why she stands at his side.

It isn’t why she’s standing next to Saw right now, in the poorly-lit back room of a cantina in the heart of Iziz City on Onderon.

Not that she’s about to explain that to the restless, scowling Barebel male who is standing a few strides away from Saw’s impassive face, trying his best to look significantly bigger and tougher than he is. Jyn stands straight and silent at Saw’s left hand, watching the lizard man scrape his claws idly against his armored leg, shuffling his spikey boots, and constantly twitching his upper lip back to reveal rows of serrated, grey teeth.  Krobb the Barebel is nervous to be facing down Saw Gerrera and three of his nastiest fighters (four, but Krobb hasn’t even glanced at Jyn, clearly doesn’t consider her any kind of threat). But Barebel are hard to kill and hell to fight, and Krobb knows it. Jyn can tell by the way he’s left his throat unarmored and his ammunition belt half-full that this lizard isn’t nearly as afraid as he ought to be.

(Mama says, _People like to blind themselves to painful truths, because it’s_

But she’s not thinking about that.)

The Barebel’s lack of prep work for this meeting is his problem, not Jyn’s. His two buddies behind him, one smaller Barebel fem and one skinny, knobby Human male, are even less armed and armored than the leader. Jyn flicks a finger to Sperado, who shifts slightly left to cover the Barebel fem (Meftians have faster reflexes than most humans, a good counter to the Barebel’s twitchy, rapid-fire movements). Jyn clenches her other fist, leaving two fingers wrapped outside her thumb and the rest tucked under. Behind her, Codo and Magva react by stepping side by side and staring down the skinny Human male (Codo still hesitates to shoot other Humans, but Magva doesn’t hesitate, _ever_ ).

If Krobb notices any of this, he gives no sign, his reddish eyes locked on Saw and his voice hissing as he says, “You sstill haven’t told me, Ssaw, why my people should throw in with your lot.”

“I have,” Saw replies gravely, as if this isn’t the fifth time he’s explained things to this thick-headed scale-skin, as if the answer isn’t glaringly obvious to anyone who has ever pointed a blaster downrange at white armor and pulled the trigger and lived with the consequences that came after. “You are not strong enough to win this war alone, and your resources could be put to better use in the fight against the enemy.”

Krobb shrugs his heavily plated shoulders. “That’ss why _you_ want _uss,_ but not why _we_ need _you_.”

They really should just shoot him and negotiate with the next in line, Jyn thinks impatiently, and wonders for a moment why Saw isn’t doing just that. It wouldn’t be the first time. Instead, the Partisan commander spreads his hands wide, heavy armor clanking slightly, and asks patiently, “How many did you lose, my friend, in Yolahn Square?”

Both of the Barebel hiss at this, and the Human male shifts angrily, a scowl twisting his long, narrow features. Jyn doesn’t smirk, she’s too a good a soldier for that (and anyway, an Imperial victory is never funny), but Codo coughs a little to hide his chuckle and Sperado cackles unabashedly.

Krobb bares his teeth and lashes his scaly tail, but Saw simply looks at him steadily, and reluctantly the Barebel leader answers. “Too many.”

Saw nods. “Brave soldiers, lost to an implacable foe,” he agrees. His voice is almost gentle, almost kind, but those notes are lost under the weight of the sorrow as he adds, “But it was a greater loss than that, was it not?”

Krobb hisses again, and the Barebel fem is lashing her tail like an angry lothcat. Jyn’s right hand rests on her truncheon, light as a glimmerfly. At last Krobb shakes his head sharply. “They burned down the whole market. Dozenss of people. _Our_ people.  They left…” he pauses, and his kind cannot cry but Jyn looks in his small red eyes and she knows despair when she sees it. “They left none alive in that ssquare,” the Barebel whispers at last.

Saw nods thoughtfully, but Krobb perhaps sees something in his expression that he doesn’t like, because he snaps out defensively, “Our intel wass bad. There were more ‘trooperss than we ever expected, and we had too few ssoldierss, too few weapons, too little time. For too long, we have had _too little_.”

A lesser man might have laughed, or made false noises of sympathy, or tried to stoke their rage and grief to his own gain. Saw Gerrera simply stretches out one armored hand and says solemnly, “And I am offering you more.”

“More,” Krobb repeats flatly.

“Strength to protect your remaining loved ones,” Saw continues. “Weapons to cut down the monsters who cut down your innocent. Information on their weaknesses, that you might strike for their withered hearts.” His voice is steady, but somehow it grows in power and depth, until the room fair rings with it, and Jyn stands a little taller and grips her blaster hilt and _listens_. “I am offering you the chance to tear down the flag that dares to wave over the bodies of your slaughtered people, to tear limb from limb those who dare to set the flames to your homes. I am offering you the chance to _fight back_.”

For a moment, Jyn thinks they are done here. She’s already calculating the number of new recruits, whether or not there will be enough to set up a new outpost, what impact they will have on their supply chain and whether or not she can scrounge a few new scandoc packages for some of them, because she needs new scouts after that mess at Unifar Temple…

And then Krobb makes a grating noise in his throat. It takes Jyn a moment to identify it as a laugh. “Too little, too late, Gerrera,” he snarls. “You offer uss a placce in your army, sso long as we all bow our headss to your will. Everyone knowss there iss no authority but Ssaw’s authority in the Partissanss.”

Anger burns in Jyn’s chest at the spitting speech; she’s not entirely sure what the Barebel’s point is, but that’s an insult if ever she’s heard one. But Krobb isn’t done, not yet. “We have better offerss, Ssaw,” he says with grim satisfaction. “I thought to give you a chancce, but you offer only a different kind of ssubmission. The Alliancce hass offered my people full cooperation, and rankss for my officcerss - ”

“Ranks?” Saw’s voice is no longer loud and ringing, but it cuts through Krobb’s hiss like a sharp knife through flesh. From his other side, Jyn hears Sperado grunt in anger, and the Human members of their party shift their weight in spite and disgust. Saw broke with the Alliance not three months ago after one too many stupid reprimands and cowardly orders, and the parting has left many among the cadre still bitter.

It has left Saw quieter than Jyn recalls him ever being, but something dark moves under his words now as he speaks. “They offer you ranks,” he repeats. “For your officers.” He takes a step forward, just one, but immediately, all three of the outsiders flinch back. Jyn’s fingers curl delicately over the hilt of her largest blade.

“I offer you a chance to throw off the shackles of the Empire, a chance to destroy those who would crush you with slavery and death,” Saw tilts his head slowly, and Jyn’s weight settles forward on her toes. “And they offer you,” the darkness in his words is rising to the surface, “ _ranks._ ”

“Mind yoursself, Gerrera,” Krobb dips his head and bares all his sharp teeth now, an aggressive stance. “I have no wish to fight you, but if you threaten me or mine,” he jerks his scaly face towards the cantina door behind Saw’s back. “Well, the Imperialss are alwayss assking for information on the infamous Partissanss.”

If Jyn were less of a good soldier, she would be thinking about how stupid Krobb is, to threaten Saw Gerrera when the Partisans are between him and the door. If she were less focused, less dedicated, less _ready_ , she might be thinking that Krobb’s obvious fear of Saw has made him overplay his hand. She might even be considering that Krobb was never really a soldier or merc or even a militia man, back in the days those existed on Onderon. He’s just some angry citizen with good management skills who has kept his small but tough band together for a couple years.

But Jyn is a damn good soldier, so all she’s thinking when Krobb’s last hiss fades into the silence of the room is – _yes?_

A breath, then Saw says quietly, “Jyn.”

 _Yes_.

She moves before the word is fully formed – she’s across the short distance in three flying steps, light on her toes and fast with her blade. She lashes out with the deadly edge of her smallest blade once, twice, parting the smaller, thinner scales of Krobb’s inner thighs like the rind of some exotic fruit in the space of one quick breath, in and out, slash and slash. Her fingers are warm with hot, blueish blood, and the Barebel shrieks and collapses forward. Quick as thought, Jyn darts behind him and grabs his cranial ridge, jerking his head back and exposing his un-armored neck. Her bloody blade comes to rest, delicately, against the even thinner scales of his throat.

Behind her, Sperado bellows as he smashes the Barebel fem to the table top with a resounding crack, and Magva trills her vicious battle cry as she shoots the Human male in the knee cap and then slams her booted heel down on the wound. The man screams and then lies still, and a moment later, only his moans and the harsh breathing of the pinned Barebel can be heard.

“I offered you my hand in friendship,” Saw says at last, his voice solemn as the grave. “And you spat upon it.” Over the Barebel’s heaving shaking shoulder, Jyn watches Saw march slowly forward, heedless of the pool of blue blood forming under his steel-plated boots. The Partisan commander looms over the kneeling outsider, glances briefly at his two downed friends as Krobb whines deep in his throat, the earthy smell of his scales turning suddenly rancid with fear. The difference between his shivering terror and Saw’s towering rage is so stark that Jyn can’t even understand how they can exist in the same room, the same planet, the same _reality_.

“I will suffer no threat to my people,” Saw tells the Barebel.

Krobb draws in a sharp breath, which moves his throat just enough against her razor sharp blade that Jyn feels a few drops of blood trickle past her fingers, hot and sticky and helpless under her hands.

“That which threatens my people is my enemy.” Saw raises his eyes from the Barebel to Jyn, and then he says softly, but with no room for compromise, “I will suffer no enemy to live.”

He says nothing else, but Jyn is a good soldier and she hears the order. _Kill him_.

This is why she stands at his side.

Jyn’s hand is steady on the man’s throat, her weight on her toes, her mind clear of distractions. She raises her chin slowly, looks her commander square in the eye –

\- and does not move.

Saw’s face darkens like a thunderstorm, but Jyn does not move. She sees the argument they will have later playing out in his eyes, and already knows what her answers will be. She also knows that she would die for Saw, the moment he asked it of her, and the tight pinch of his thin mouth tells her that he remembers it, too. So Saw Gerrera glowers and Jyn glares back and _she_ _does not move_.

The Barebel is a piss poor soldier. He leads his people into an ambush on bad information. He values arbitrary rules and ranks over a fighting force that actually knows how to fight. He turned down the mighty fist of the Partisans for the limp handshake of the Alliance. He foolishly challenged Saw Gerrera.

But he is, in the end, just a man trying to keep his people safe. He lost a child in the Yolahn Square massacre. His wives and husband will grieve his loss. His other children will grieve it more.

Saw says, _kill him_.

Jyn says, _no_.

This is why she stands at his side.

Slowly, ponderously, Saw looks back down at Krobb. “Count yourself fortunate,” he says quietly. “That you are no threat to me.”

Abruptly, he turns his back on them all and strides to the door. Sperado growls and smacks a hard, hairy palm against the Barebel fem’s scaly stomach, a warning for her to stay down on the table top. Then he, too, turns and follows Saw out the door and into the noisy cantina beyond. Magva and Codo are hard on his heels, Magva only taking the barest moment to spit on the floor, right in the middle of Krobb’s blood pool. She never glances at the Barebel himself, though, and a moment later it is only Jyn and the three wounded outsiders.

She drops the knife, and slips back and out of reach, just in case. Krobb simply collapses forward, however, and the Barebel fem twitches instinctively towards him but stops herself, watching Jyn with wide pink eyes.

“I avoided the main arteries,” Jyn tells her, because the Human male is still moaning with his eyes closed and Krobb is probably half-way to unconsciousness by now. “Pressure on the cuts, bacta gel if you have it, antiseptic if you don’t.”

Then she skirts the blood pool and the Human male’s arm reach (just in case, just in case, a good soldier never assumes a possible enemy is harmless, not if she wants to survive), and angles toward the door.

“Why didn’t you - ” The Barebel fem’s voice is stilted and uncertain, like she’s not even sure herself why she’s asking, and she chokes off quickly.

Jyn doesn’t owe her a damn thing, but she pauses in the door anyway, glances back over her shoulder. “I’m a good soldier,” she says.

The woman doesn’t understand, but Jyn ducks out into the cantina, weaving her way through the rowdy crowd towards the back door where the disguised armored truck will be idling, waiting to return them to their base. Saw will say nothing until they are back, until they are alone and he can rail about the necessity of his decisions and the importance of trust between leader and subordinate. But Jyn is a good soldier, and she already knows the exact important of trust, to the both of them. She trusts Saw, and as far as she has ever seen, she’s the only person alive he has trusted in years.

After all, this is why she stands at his side, and why he keeps her there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every Partisan named here is from [this list.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Partisans)
> 
> [Barebels](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Barabel) are supposedly an insanely violent race of lizard people, but that's apparently based on like, one reference, and frankly, I think it sounds like racism. But then, if it's in-universe racism too, then it makes sense to me that Krobb might have tried to pull a tough-guy act on Saw (who had just penned him into a room with only one exit and was a pretty intimidating figure, let's be real). He probably hoped the Barebel reputation for berserker violence and tough scales would let him brazen it out. (It did not.)
> 
> I don't know if any specific battles/massacres went down at [any of the places I mentioned](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Onderon), but they are canon places on Onderon, at least.
> 
> Chapter title from [here](https://tankawanka.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/my-deathday-this-poem-is-a-knife-by-lynn-henry-part-ii-the-poem/).


	3. and if you don't like it, then -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for thoughts about suicide.

It turns out that Jyn has only ever actually been good at one thing: surviving.

On the first anniversary of the day Saw dumped her - in a bunker on Tamyse Prime, in the middle of a war zone, with a blaster and a knife and a lie about how he’d come back for her in the morning – that first anniversary, she huddles in the thin, torn blanket provided by the youth homeless shelter. Her rough (stolen) cap is pulled low over her ears and eyes, her (also stolen) fingerless gloves are fraying around the edges and only a little more wear and tear from falling right off, and despite the blanket and almost three full layers of (tattered, worn thin, mostly stolen) clothes, she’s shivering. It’s winter in this hemisphere on Corellia, and Jyn should have left a month ago before the cold set in, but her job fell through and she got away with her life but not her credits.

So instead of buying a new shirt (one without holes in it) and a ride off this planet, she’s drifting from cantina to low-end club to homeless shelter. The tourist season is over, so there goes that easy line of creds, and the locals aren’t friendly at all to an outsider with no street cred moving in on their turf.

The Selonian curled up on the creaking cot next to her growls in her sleep. No, it’s not growling, it’s irregular coughing, low and painful. Jyn pulls her blanket tighter around her thin shoulders and eyes the girl. Her yellow-brown fur is patchy and full of mange, and when she turns her head in Jyn’s direction, her dark eyes are runny and disturbingly vapid. The faded red mark stained into her fur on her shoulder marks her as an infertile female. Common enough among her kind, but Jyn doesn’t know their culture well enough to guess if that has any connection to the Selonian’s presence in the shelter. A quick glance under the Selonian’s bunk, however, reveals a pile of used Neutron Pixie cartridges and a good guess as to why the girl’s face was so…vapid.

Jyn doesn’t know Selonian tolerances either, but there’s enough Pixie under there to kill about a dozen large Humans. It could probably end Jyn about thirty times over. Not that she’d really know. Things like drugs or alcohol aren’t high on the list of Things That Keep You Alive, which is the only goal she’s had for a while now. One year, actually.

Someone opens the main doors to the shelter, one of the workers going home, she guesses. It’s near midnight now, and the shelter is half full because “youths” don’t tend to hang around here if they can help it. The shipping yards are generally pretty willing to take healthy youngsters, and so are the gangs. The unhealthy ones tend not to last long enough to take up much space.

Jyn shoots another look at the bunk nearby, and it’s coughing, patchy occupant. The Selonian claws weakly at her own blanket, pulling it halfway over the angry red welt on her shoulder, where a few tufts of greasy fur are only just holding on. Jyn debates reaching across to tug the blanket all the way up, if only to hide the ugly sore from view, but in the end she just curls her knees in tighter and tries to conserve body heat. She knows better than to stretch out her hand to people with sharp teeth, no matter how docile they look.

Besides, what good would it do? It’s fucking freezing in here, and that blanket is more hole than cloth.  Jyn isn’t planning to sleep tonight anyway, not in a room full of strangers, but even if she were alone, it would be stupid to lay down and let her body temperature drop. This is one of the poorest of shelters, barely more than a few rickety walls and a handful of old donated bits of furniture and clothes. The temperature in here is only better than outside by virtue of a lack of wind chill and a minor body heat. Survival tonight will require staying awake.

Jyn is good at surviving, although at the moment, she’s struggling to remember that. The yawning emptiness in her belly isn’t helping much.

 _Hahaoya, Hahaoya_ , the Selonian murmurs in a rough tongue, interspersed with that rasping cough. _Watashi wa samui…samuidesu, Hahaoya_. Another round of that growling cough. The Selonian fumbles for something on the floor – another Neutron Pixie – and one shaky hand drags a cartridge to her black-lined lips.

There is a volunteer supposedly on watch somewhere in this shelter, probably up the rickety metal stairs to the office space above the lower floors. Jyn considers going and looking for that person. The sign over the check-in desk says that the volunteers are here because they care. The sign on the nearby wall says that the duty volunteer in the “overnight station” is here to help. The pamphlet that she’d found in the gutter when she was hiding from the Imperials after her bad job says that children should never be afraid to ask for help.

Vaguely, she recalls someone once saying to her that children should never be afraid. Or that _she_ shouldn’t be afraid, maybe. Or was it, “there is no need to be afraid, my dear girl” with a smile too wide and a white, white jacket against the jagged black outline of the glittering city –

Jyn shakes her head to push away the strange memory (dream?) and listens to the Selonian rasp as she inhales the Pixie cartridge. Her belly growls, and her bones ache with cold, and if she were to reach over there and get her arm bitten off by a rabid, high-as-the-stars Selonian, there is no one in this whole fucking galaxy who would even notice, let alone care.

She almost reaches over anyway, but she doesn’t want to get bitten by those massive (rotting, but still massive) teeth. With Jyn’s luck, she’d either slice a major artery, or get some kind of killer infection.  No, she’s better off staying over here, on her little metal cot with her little torn blanket, keeping watch and just…surviving.

She’s good at surviving, even if she’s shit at helping people. Or at being a good soldier (if she had been better, Saw wouldn’t have left her behind). Or at slicing, apparently (if she was as good at that as she thought, she wouldn’t have blown her last job). Or at… _ner ori’dush kar’ta_ , she’s shit at _everything_ except surviving.

The coughing in the next bunk suddenly rises to a fever pitch. The person a few bunks down shifts over to their opposite side, putting their back to the Selonian. No one else stirs. The coughing goes on and on, and at last Jyn can’t stand it anymore. She shoves to the edge of her bunk and reaches across the narrow gap. “Hey, you,” she says hoarsely, her throat dry and her lips chapped from dehydration and the cold.

The coughing turns uneven and gasping, and someone from further down the room shouts angrily in a language Jyn doesn’t recognize. She ignores it, pushing herself stiffly off her bunk and dropping to one wavering knee in the narrow space between bunks. It takes her two tries to get a grip, but she finally wraps a cold hand around the Selonian’s flaking shoulder. “Hey, hey, look at me,” Jyn croaks, trying to twist the writhing Selonian around. The girl’s watery eyes fly open and she turns her furry face towards Jyn, but her gaze is far away and lost, so lost.

 _Hahaoya,_ she gasps between racking coughs. _Hahaoya,_ and then, _nanitozo,_ and something that sounds like _sorry_. She fumbles wildly for the floor again, knocking the last couple cartridges askew, but Jyn grips her hand and holds it steady. “No,” she says in as clear a voice as she can manage. “No, it’s no good. It’s kriffing killing you, sister. Killing you.”

The Selonian’s hand convulses around Jyn’s fingers; she snaps her head up, and for just a moment, Jyn thinks those watery eyes focus right on her. A heartbeat later, the coughs hit her like a gale wind, and she jerks and curls in on herself, hacking so hard that Jyn’s arm vibrates.

And then the coughing stops.

The already foul smell of filthy fur and rotten teeth is suddenly drowned in a stench Jyn knows all too well. The person a few bunks down groans and throws a humanoid arm over their head. Jyn sets the Selonian’s hand down on her now-still chest and rubs her palm absently on her thigh. Her other hand reaches up and twines around her mother’s pendant, tight enough to feel the edges of the crystal dig into her skin even through the gloves. There are words she could say, maybe. She doesn’t know what Selonians do for the dead, but most species have some sort of prayer or blessing they say, and Jyn knows several, most of them quick and easy to mutter even under the pressure of blaster fire or while on the run.

Most of them are some variation of “we hope it’s better for you now.”

Jyn kneels next to the dead girl and wonders if it is.

Someone must have alerted the duty volunteer, because a burly, dark skinned Klatooinian lumbers down the narrow aisle between bunks and taps Jyn softly on the shoulder. “Alright then, move aside. Go on, nothing to see here now, child. Back to your bunk.”

Jyn blinks, looks up, and then shuffles away on her knees as the Klatooinian scoops up the corpse. The dead girl’s blanket slips and falls to the floor, and Jyn picks it up automatically.

The Klatooinian pauses, looking down from his impressive height to her. “You want me to take that back to the front?” He asks, and his voice is gruff but there is a note of weary kindness that hits Jyn like a grav-bus. She immediately ducks her head, because she learned long ago never, ever to cry in front of anyone she doesn’t know – which is every living being in the galaxy, these days.

The Klatooinian shifts the dead girl uneasily in his arms, but he doesn’t walk away, so Jyn gives a brief shake of her head, and then resolutely drapes the blanket around her own shoulders. The smell isn’t so bad anyway, once the volunteer has walked away with the corpse.

Jyn pushes herself up from the floor to return to her own bunk…and her fingers catch on the last unopened cartridge of Neutron Pixie. Catch and close and carry it with her back to her lumpy mattress on its creaky metal frame.

 Less than five minutes later, the Klatooinian comes back out and cleans up the empty cartridges under the dead girl’s former bunk. He takes the limp pillow too, and then there’s nothing else to mark that anyone was ever in that bunk, so he quietly leaves and doesn’t come back. He never looks at Jyn. No one else looks at him.

And then there is nothing but the quiet of the shelter, the bite of cold in her skin, and the little cartridge clutched tightly in her hand. Forty-five mils, she thinks hazily. Enough Pixie to kill at least three or four Humans. It’s supposed to be a powerful hallucinogen, too, so it would grant her probably all kinds of wild dreams before it carried her off to…wherever people went when they were dead. Somewhere that everyone hoped was better.

There’s a small tab on the side of the cartridge, where it can be flipped open with just a flick of her fingernail.

It would be easy, honestly. And given her body weight, probably quick. When it was over, the Klatooinian would probably shuffle back out here and pick her up and carry away her body and her thin pillow and whatever of her stuff the others didn’t strip from the corpse first. And that would be it, just another winter night in a shelter on Corellia. Nobody would be notified. Probably no one would even say words over her body, a murmured hope that things were better for her, now.

Jyn’s good at surviving, but right now, in this shelter with this cartridge in her hand, it seems like a pointless skill to have. And considering how much of a mess she’s turned her own life into, maybe it would be nice to just…stop. Flip that fucking little latch open and maybe let someone else clean up her last mess.

(Papa says, _Treat dangerous things with respect, Stardust_.)

(Mama says, _Clean up your own messes, Jyn_.)

(Saw says, _there are worse things than death.)_

(The prayers say, _it will be better, after_.)

And Jyn says, _no_.

She curls her fingers around the cartridge, tight, tighter, until the tab buckles and the plastic crunches, and the little vial inside breaks and bleeds into the surrounding aerosol, breaking down the chemicals of the drug and rendering it as useless as chalk dust.

No one will mourn Jyn when she dies. No one will even notice. The universe, or the Force, might even be better off if she wrapped herself up in her shitty, borrowed shroud and quietly removed herself from everybody’s way. Maybe people would even be happier without her around to steal their shit or remind them that poverty exists or what-the-fuck- _ever_. Jyn’s death might even be the best thing to ever happen in all of space and time, on the grand scheme of things.

But frankly, _who gives a shit?_

 _My_ life, she thinks with a flash of anger that serves to warm her frozen cheeks. My life, my chances, my _choices_ , and _fuck anybody_ who thinks I’m giving up anything that’s _mine_ for the convenience of a galaxy that doesn’t give a shit about me _._

 She’s not going to die. So it’s inconvenient for the galaxy? So it’s cold and uncomfortable and people are cruel bastards? So she’s worth nothing to anyone else alive?

So what?

 _Fuck. Them_.

Jyn throws the destroyed drug cartridge under the bunk and settles herself more comfortably against the wall, her two thin blankets tight around her body. Tomorrow she’ll head for the south side of the city. There’s a nasty gang out that way, but if Jyn is smart and careful, she might be able to land a job as an enforcer or maybe a break-in specialist, pull a few jobs and get enough credits to get her arse off this rock and out into the Outer Rim, where there are fewer shelters but more employers willing to look past her age and hire her to do the dirty jobs that “children” shouldn’t do.

She will survive, because she chooses to. Nothing else matters but that.

A blaster, she thinks meditatively. First thing she needs to get is a blaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [the Beastie Boys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VphselTLV_A), those poets of their age.
> 
> [Neutron Pixie](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Neutron_Pixie) is a canon drug, although I have no idea what the measurements of it would actually be and don't much care to know. Neither does Jyn.


	4. a daybreak that's wondrously clear

Jyn isn’t a very good public speaker. She’s not a complete moron with words, and she’s done her fair share of ‘into the breach’ speeches before a big battle. Soldiers and mercenaries and gangsters, all people she’s persuaded around to her way of thinking in her time – sometimes with just her words, sometimes with the aid of a well-placed truncheon or a sharp enough blade.

But she’s never had to cajole a group of skittish politicians to put their careers, their lives, and most of all, their financial support up against a real threat. She hopes that maybe Cassian will give her a few cues to follow, but when he talks, he maintains eye contact with his superior officer and almost no one else, he speaks in facts and absolutes, gives nothing more than a dry (somewhat edited, she notes) report of the insanity they have witnessed out there in the stars. His report is brief and factual and clear, and among sane people who wanted to prevent evil from running amok in the galaxy, would have been more than enough. But Jyn knows that politicians won’t be stirred by facts or necessity, and he knows it, too. Of course he does. His complete lack of effort towards stirring the lot of them tells her everything she needs to know about her chances of getting the Allied Council to make the right decision.

After Cassian finishes speaking, she tries anyway.

Hells, she even steals some of his words, in the desperate hope that maybe whatever despair has apparently taken over Cassian Andor hasn’t settled into the bones of all his colleagues. His superiors. His people.

It doesn’t work.

“I’m sorry, Jyn,” Mon Mothma says quietly, as the discordant voices of the Alliance babble and wash around her like so much white noise. “But without the full support of the council,” she bows her head elegantly, her serene face beautiful in it’s clean sorrow, and Jyn wants to fling mud at her or muss up her perfect coiffure or _something_ – “the odds are too great,” the Senator finishes, and just like that, it’s over.

She’s failed.

Bodhi trudges out of the Council chamber behind her, his head low, his steps heavy, and his fists clenched. Cassian is nowhere to be seen; in fact, she can’t recall seeing him at all once his report was given and the room’s attention turned elsewhere.

Well, so what? For all his talk about _losing everything_ and _doing something about it_ , he’s clearly given up.

Everybody’s given up.

Chirrut and Baze are waiting for them in the hangar, and Jyn sees the grim set of Baze’s jaw and the ironic tilt of Chirrut’s brow. Bodhi stands close behind her shoulder despite her angry prowling, and the three of them are all she has now. The only people in all the galaxy who believe in her father’s last message, in the magnitude of his sacrifice and the rightness of his cause.

Her cause, now.

Not Cassian’s, though, no matter how intense his eyes when he leaned in close and told her rebellions were built on hope.

Jyn clenches her teeth. She’s not been a good person, maybe, but she’s chosen this road now, and she can’t bear the idea of walking away from it. Not anymore. Not ever again.

It’s not just about Papa’s dying words (which echo and rattle in her head like ammo packs, like promises, like a _need_ she can’t shake out from under her skin). It’s not Saw’s weary face as he told her to _go, go with him, Jyn, run!_ It isn’t even about the way Cassian looks at her when they walk off the shuttle and into the Command briefing room (wary and careful and not nearly as hostile as she expects, and his quiet “are you sure you want to do this?” ricochets in her noisy head alongside _save the rebellion_ and _my Stardust, I have so much to tell you_.)

It’s the little girl in Jedha, who clung to Jyn’s neck as she carried her away from the blasters and grenades, and died in a flash of green light six hours later. It’s the smug, cold grin on the man in white’s face as he struck her father across the jaw in the pouring rain of Eadu. It’s the relentless, endless march of white plas-steel boots across the backs of all the people Jyn’s ever known or loved or hells, _met_.

It’s the scream of a planet, dying.

It’s still her life, her chances, her choices…and she chooses to fight.

Which is all well and good, except all she has is three battered Jedhans, a pipe truncheon, and a stolen blaster. Shit, she doesn’t even have so much as a sharp stick to her kriffing name.

“The Force is strong,” Chirrut says when she grumbles and Bodhi bites his lip and meets her eyes in solidarity.

Well, that’s _bully_ for the Force, Jyn thinks, but Chirrut held her hand after her father died (right before she ripped into Cassian and he turned right around and tore the scab off the old festering wound she’d almost forgotten she was nursing), so aloud, all Jyn says is, “I’m not sure the four of us is quite enough.”

“How many do we need?” Baze asks suddenly, and Jyn stares at him, because how in the galaxy is she meant to answer that? An army, she thinks, a dozen armies. At the very least, a kriffing spaceship and a droid or two to run it would be nice.

Baze cocks an eyebrow at her irritable expression and nods to something behind her.

Jyn turns around.

Cassian is standing quietly behind her, with what looks like two dozen weathered soldiers that wouldn’t have been much out of place in a Partisan cell. His face is calm – no, _weary_. He looks too tired to be anything other than calm, but there’s an edge to his expression that Jyn can’t name, and isn’t sure she wants to try.

“They were never going to believe you,” he says.

The blood in her veins burns with irritation and the restless fury of a caged lothal tiger. Jyn grits her teeth and spreads her arms wide, twisting her face into a snarling approximation of a smile. “Thanks for all your support,” she says, and her voice is sweet cream studded with razor blades. He hears them, she sees him register the cuts, but he doesn’t flinch or grimace.

Instead, he opens his mouth and knocks all the air from her lungs. “But I do. I believe you.”

And then he offers her a squadron of soldiers and saboteurs and assassins - an army, better than an army, because he steps close and meets her eyes without fear or bargaining or even mockery and he says _I couldn’t face myself if I gave up now_ and Jyn’s breath catches because he _knows_. He knows what she’s facing, he knows what she’s chosen, and he knows where it will lead her. There is only one question in his eyes when he steps close enough that she can feel his warmth in her skin and his words brushing softly against her cheek as he speaks.

Does she trust him to follow?

(Papa says, _My love for her has never faded_.)

(Mama says, _Trust the Force_.)

(Cassian says, _Welcome home_.)

And Jyn says, _yes_.

They are not very good public speakers, the pair of them, but two dozen sentients gather up whatever they can carry into the stolen Imperial shuttle, because Jyn asked them to fight and Cassian asked them to follow. They are not very good soldiers, because Cassian turns his back on his orders and Jyn couldn’t give less of a shit about them to begin with. They are not even, necessarily, very good people, but Cassian’s mouth curves up into a half-smile when she stands in front of the crowded cargo hold and calls for the blessings of the Force, and in his eyes, Jyn sees hope. She smiles back with all the faith she has to give, and it’s enough. It’s enough.

They are not good, maybe, but they are alive, they are together, and they are _fighting_. 

It's enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Still I Rise](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-i-rise), by the incomparable Maya Angelou.
> 
> A bit rough, but it was sort of two prompts smooshed into one.


	5. the face that conquered

Jyn Erso was supposed to die on Scarif.

She knows this, the soft-spoken doctors know it, the nervous guards who stand outside her medward door know it, the whole kriffing universe knows it. The leaders of Rebel Intelligence sure as all the hells know it, she can tell by the hard-lined, carefully constructed, completely  _blank_ looks they give her as they file in and out of her ward. She answers their questions honestly, because there is nothing left for her to hide (well, almost nothing, nothing they _ask_ her about, anyway, and she's not about to explain why she demanded to be in the same medward as...well, she's not even going to bring it up). She tells them the truth, and after awhile they stop asking anything because the facts are obvious and indisputable.

Jyn Erso took a squad of some of the best operatives in their force out onto a death’s head beach. She somehow inspired the entire Alliance Fleet to mutiny and follow her there, too. (She’s not really sure how, honestly, but apparently the blame for that transgression has been laid squarely at her door and frankly, she’s not too concerned about it. Add it to the list.) She went on a noble, heroic suicide mission and she was supposed to nobly, heroically die doing it.

But she’s always been kind of shite at doing what she was supposed to.

So here she is, sitting in the Alliance medward, a brace around one leg, a bandage around her arm, and her skin covered in various medical concoctions (burn cream, antiseptic, bacta gel, and something called a “rejuvenator” for the scar on her forehead, although she has no idea what the hells that is all about and the doctor who explained it to her just said “they’ll probably want your face intact,” which is ominous as fuck).

The room isn’t very big, but there is a bacta tank in the back of it, and room for two narrow medical beds plus a whole host of monitors, med droid plug in points, and a hanging curtain that can be drawn across the door to block the view from the hall. The metal beds are clearly from two separate hospitals, the monitors are all different makes and models that have been wired together with homemade adaptors, and the curtain looks like it was made to hang in a wealthy drawing room rather than a medical unit in the jungle.

Jyn’s a little bit in awe, actually. It’s the nicest medical facility she’s ever been in.

But to be honest, it could be a rathole on Tatooine and she’d be happy to be there, because she’s not dead and – more importantly – she’s not alone.

Cassian is waking up.

The monitors whir and chirp and beep in a language Jyn can’t even begin to understand, but it’s irrelevant, because Cassian – despite her expectations – decides he’s going to wake up from his three-day-long coma as loudly and furiously as possible.

At first it’s just a soft groan and a curl of his right hand, and Jyn starts to push herself to her feet slowly. She’s supposed to hit the little button that calls the med droid at the first sign of stirring, but the groan sounds more tired than pained, so she decides to maybe get a word in edgewise with him before the doctors swarm in. She’s only just gotten her weight balanced on her good leg and her bad leg, though, when Cassian suddenly throws out his arm and yells something completely unintelligible. He thrashes, struggling to pull himself upright, his eyes wild and his hands grasping at the air, the sheets, the monitors, but the strain on his newly-pieced together spine is too great and he immediately crashes back down. His words turn from confused to raging in a heartbeat, and if she weren’t so kriffing panicked, Jyn would probably be trying to pick out the obvious curse words from the mess of his speech.

But she is panicked, because he just had parts of his damn spine replaced and now he looks like he’s trying to rip the whole thing out. “Cassian!” Jyn yells hoarsely above his slurred shouts. “ _Cassian, stop!”_

The noise draws the doctors, of course, but Jyn gets there first and pins his shoulders down with her hands, saying his name over and over until at last he blinks rapidly and focuses on her, his hands flying up to catch her wrists in a painful (but encouragingly strong, at least) grip. “Jyn,” he says, in an almost clear voice. “Jyn.”

“Yeah,” she gives him a crooked grin, trying to hide the wince as one of the nurses, in his rush to untangle Cassian’s IV drip from his heart monitor, accidentally jostles her bad leg and knocks her slightly askew. She doesn’t quite manage it, though, and when he sees her grimace, his face twists into a fierce scowl that startles her even more. Cassian without a filter is…different. He spits something that definitely sounds derogatory at the nurse, jerking his arm from the man’s grip. When the nurse reaches to catch him again and reinsert the IV, Cassian’s fingers dart out and grab the nurse’s thumb, twisting it into a painful lock that makes the poor man gasp and bend double trying to relieve the pressure.

“Sir, please,” the aggrieved nurse grunts, but Jyn intervenes because she hasn’t known Cassian that long, but she’s learned what _that_ intent, slightly wide-eyed stare means. The poor nurse is about to get his thumb broken, if he’s lucky.

“Hey,” she presses down on her palms against his shoulder, an act which both settles him firmer against the mattress and pushes her up and over his face, filling up most of his vision. He turns instantly from the nurse to her, and his eyes lock on her. Jyn swallows, and then smiles again, a little derisively. “Stop being such a shitheel,” she orders, raising an eyebrow at him. “You’re safe, you know.” The words, meant as a mild joke, catch in her throat and to her absolute disgust her voice shakes slightly. “We’re safe,” she says softly.

Cassian drops the nurse’s hand, who mutters something under his breath and then bravely reaches for the IV again. Cassian twitches, but he keeps his eyes on Jyn’s and he allows the nurse to plug him back into the drug drip.

“You’re safe,” Jyn repeats, and once the nurse and the clucking doctor have backed off, fiddling with the monitors and the charts rather than anything directly in contact with Cassian’s skin, she slides her hands off his shoulders.

“Safe,” he agrees, and clumsily catches one of her hands.

He’s still half-drugged, broken in more places than she wants to remember, due for another two surgeries and one more bacta immersion (at the _least_ ) and definitely not up for a real conversation right now. All the same, Jyn finds herself winding her fingers through his and leaning close, dropping her voice as if she thinks the hovering medical staff won’t be able to hear. “We were supposed to die,” she tells him.

Cassian watches her, his hand curled around hers and his eyes slightly unfocused.

“I should have died at the top of the tower,” Jyn continues solemnly, and in her mind’s eye she sees the man in white sneering down at her, blaster raised and his fucking cape flaring out between her and the final button she has to press to send out the plans, to keep her promise. One second later, she thinks, and that would have been her end. If Cassian had been one second longer getting to her, it would have been all over for her, for the plans, maybe for the Rebellion as a whole, who knows?

Cassian. Cassian, who fell several stories into a series of steel beams (a sound that lives on in her nightmares even now, and maybe for the rest of her life). If she should have died at the top of the tower - “You should have died at the bottom of it,” she whispers.

The doctor and the nurse are silent, no longer even pretending to mutter back and forth behind her. She finds suddenly that she doesn’t really care. Cassian’s eyes seem to clear as she speaks, and his fingers tighten around hers.

“Yes,” he rasps slowly, like it hurts him to speak the same way it hurts her to speak, but damned if he won’t do it anyway. He tugs slightly on her hand, more a gentle pressure than a pull, but Jyn knows what he wants. She leans even closer, her face only a few centimeters from his, close enough that she can feel his breath on her skin again, close enough that he can see the joy in her eyes despite her careful expression. “Should…have died,” he agrees slowly, and then his battered, bruised face softens and his mouth curves up, and Jyn thinks that it doesn’t matter what happens next, because this man refused to leave her and she is never, ever going to fail to return the favor.

Cassian smiles and quirks one eyebrow up. “But I,” he says softly, “am a rebel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the atticus poem:  
>  _"she wore her troubled past like scars -_  
>  _she had been through battle_  
>  _and though no one could see her demons_  
>  _they could see the face that conquered them."_
> 
> AND DONE! Day One prompts, speed written, and barely proofed, but done! Whew!


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